I posted yesterday about my puzzlement about my copy of Zelda: Ocarina of Time missing. Today, after looking in all of the likely spots again (and quite a few of the not likely), it finally hit me. I can’t find my copy of Zelda: Ocarina of Time because I don’t own a copy of Zelda: Ocarina of Time anymore! I sold it to my older nephew!
What made things start to fall into place was when I took a closer look at my N64 console. I distinctly remember having to put something red into the console to make the Zelda games work. After thinking about it for a moment, I remembered that this was called an Expansion Pak (spelled incorrectly, I might add – boo, Nintendo). I was fairly sure that it wasn’t present, but I ran a quick test just to make sure the Pak wasn’t somewhere on the inside of the console. (I couldn’t really remember exactly how the Pak went into the console.) So, I popped Zelda: Majora’s Mask in. Lo and behold, I got a screen saying that the game can’t run because an Expansion Pak isn’t present. Bingo! With that, the rest of the my memory clicked in.
My older nephew had gotten a 64 and asked if I had any decent games that I’d be interested in selling to him. Sure, I say: both of the Zelda games, along with the Expansion Pak he’d need to play them. He decided to only take one, along with the Expansion Pak, until he decided whether or not he liked the game enough to play the sequel.
So, all of my looking, digging, and scrounging for the game was for naught, for two reasons:
- I don’t own the game anymore. The chances of me finding it are thus around… 0%.
- Even if I did find it, I still wouldn’t be able to play it, because my N64 doesn’t have the required Expansion Pak.
To use a word from one of my new favorite shows of all time… frak!
“(spelled incorrectly, I might add – boo, Nintendo)”
It’s more like “Spelled more trademarkably.” As far back as the NES their cartridges were referred to as Game Paks, and the tradition of awkard unique K continues to this day. The two parts of the Wii controller are officially the Remote and the Nunchuk.
“Even if I did find it, I still wouldn’t be able to play it, because my N64 doesn’t have the required Expansion Pak.”
Half right. To my memory the only games that flat-out required the Expansion Pak were Donkey Kong 64 and Majora’s Mask. Others used it for things like higher resolution, or in the case of Perfect Dark allowed for some more game modes, but you could still play them. Ocarina of Time used the Expansion Pak in no way. HOWEVER, if you sold him the Expansion Pak, I bet you didn’t have the Jumper Pak, or whatever it was they called the “blank” that sat in that slot when you’d originally buy the console. With nothing in that slot, you actually can’t play anything at all. Though I guess if you actually got a Majora’s Mask warning screen, I might have that part wrong.
Actually, I do have that jumper thing. Little black thing in in the front top of the console, right?
At any rate, I was able to fire up Mario and Rogue Squadron, so something must be right.
Yep, that’s it. It’s just the non-memory, but I guess it still sends power or signals or whatnot through it, so it needs to be in there to function.
Rogue Squadron, however, is one of the first games to make decent use of the Expansion Pak, however, including a high resolution mode.
Ah, guess I didn’t fire it up then. I guess I had it with the Mario cart when I was trying it and thought I tried RS as well.
See title of post.